Valve reveals SteamOS in first of three announcements

Valve has made the first of three product announcements today: and it’s a new operating system.

SteamOS is a Linux-based platform that can be run “on any living room machine”. Valve says developers are already creating games for it, and interestingly that it will support open, collaborative titles that can be easily modded by users or the developers themselves down the line.

It’ll feature improved graphics processing performance (presumably Valve means over standard Linux), and Valve is currently working on better audio processing and a reduction in input lag.

Mac, Windows and media streaming

As well as running SteamOS games, the platform will stream Mac and Windows titles from your existing computer to your SteamOS living room PC over your home network. So essentially any existing titles will be available to play, in addition to titles specifically developed for SteamOS.

It’ll also support the Family Sharing feature Valve talked about last week (allowing you to “lend” games to other Steam users), parental controls and, intriguingly, access to (unspecified as yet) music, TV and movie streaming services.

So no Steam Box hardware reveal yet, but don’t worry: Valve is making two more product announcements this week, the next of which is on Wednesday evening.